Local author leads writers' class

Brenda Gates Smith talks of the writing trade.

Sisters author Brenda Gates Smith was tapped to lead Barnes & Noble's second annual writing workshop at the Bend store last week.

The national bookstore chain bills the event as the "World's Largest Writing Workshop."

"These workshops are going on at all our stores at the same time all over the country," said Lindsey Brock, Community Relations Manager for Barnes & Noble in Bend.

Since the company counts 585 stores nationwide, that makes for a pretty big workshop -- maybe even, as claimed, the world's largest. Locally, approximately 40 writers -- more than expected -- attended Smith's presentation at the Central Oregon store, forcing Brock to rustle up some extra chairs at the last minute.

Smith led the group through a series of exercises designed to help aspiring writers add punch to their own work.

Among the topics she focused on were the art of "growing" a character, and the writer's task of setting the opening scene. Many of the attending writers shared powerful opening scenes put together on the spot using Smith's formula.

Another portion of the workshop was devoted to the development of a successful story strategy. Smith used a nine-point outline and examples from familiar movie storylines to illustrate each point.

Smith is the author of two popular "pre-history" genre novels, "Secrets of the Ancient Goddess" and "Goddess of the Mountain Harvest."

Ultimately, questions zeroed in on her own writing and choosing among genre, mainstream and literary fiction.

"I wasn't expecting my first novel to go as it did," she admitted, "so I wasn't expecting to be a pre-history writer for the rest of my life."

She acknowledged that her agent wasn't pleased when she decided to shift gears.

"I'm re-creating myself," Smith said. "I decided that I wanted to do something else when I grew up, as a writer... .I wanted to go more literary."

Her current project is just that. Unfortunately, she explained, that puts her into a different market. So, to a large extent, she's also having to re-create her ties to the publishing world, as well.

She does have one big advantage, though: She's already published.

She also said that she hasn't ruled out doing another pre-history novel at some future date.

Meanwhile, Smith is also pursuing other aspects of the writer's craft. In addition to teaching classes such as this one, she works as a writing consultant and is preparing a four to six week novella workshop to be offered in Sisters.

The workshop is set for November 5 at Epicure Exchange Internet Coffeehouse. The goal of that workshop will be to have each of the students complete a novella during the course of the class. She will take participants through the full process of story idea and how to expand the project into a full-length novel. Interested persons can contact her for further information at 549-4853 or [email protected]

Smith's novella workshop is limited to only eight participants.